I have always noticed the art that P&O have on their ships, it is part of the décor and must be carefully chosen to suit, without it being in any way offensive or too old fashioned or too modern, it has to suit everyone’s tastes basically. It must cost millions!!!

But the artworks on Iona was even more interesting and clever. The main central staircase was the first piece we really noticed, the wall ran from the bottom all the way to the top, that’s over ten floors! There was this river of silver grey, white and black circles, each different and different sizes, and highly polished. Reading the blurb, they are worked in paint and resin. Over the day we discovered that the forward staircase had shades of blue circles and the back one red and blue, each had a theme, sea, moonlight and sunset. I loved the silver grey (middle staircase) and the blue (front one) but the back one with the reds, to me, just didn’t work as well, it was something about the shades of red and blue that the artist used. Later in the week, when we used the lifts a couple of times we noticed that the back wall had the same design on it, in the same colours!!! All co-ordinating. Most people probably would never notice!!!

In fact, I am pretty sure that most people on the cruise don’t take in, notice, look at the artwork round the ship, they just pass it by. But I bet if it wasn’t there they would notice. It’s a shame that P&O don’t promote the Artist that they use, or have more information online about the art, there are small plaques with information about the designs, but you have to look for them and in a crowded restaurant, you really cant go wandering round, staring at the art and looking for the information plaques!!! By the way the artist of all the rounds on the staircases is Natalie Muir, you can find her on Instagram at @nataliemuirart.

Even in the cabins there is art, I think from looking at the online brochures and videos reviews of all the cabins they use the same in all the rooms. Above the bed, the art is a series of circular mirrors and then above the sofa is a print, it reminded me of aerial view of a coral reef.

But where ever you go, there is art, from what looked like plaster ceiling roses on the wall in one of the bars, to a metal lotus flower in the Indian restaurant, to wall panels all over the ship. Each artwork toned and worked with the colours chosen in each area. The top Horizon restaurant which is the buffet is all water themed, so there was wooden fishes in the dividers to fish art of the wall, and art depicting storm force 7!

One whole staircase joining the shopping area to the Quays food area, was a piece of art in itself, with the walls of the circular marble stairs, created from metal with ginkgo leaves cut out and then back lit.

Another series of three pieces that caught my eye were in the Reception area of the ship, unfortunately it was a very busy area and I was unable to get any photos of the pieces, but they are by the Australian textile artist Rae Woolnough and if you go to her website www.artandtextiles.com under the Commission section you can see them. The three pieces are felted using merino wool and raw silk and inspired by the sea. The photos on her site don’t do them justice!

Like all art, some on the ship was just ok, but then there were pieces that were really interesting and I kept going back to look at!!! I would love to be able to find out more about some of the pieces but there doesn’t seem to be the information out there…..

And if that wasn’t enough art, there is also a Art Gallery concession, Whitewall Galleries where you can go and buy different art from Philip Grey, Doug Hyde, Jack Vettriano to LS Lowry!!!

We, Tony and I have been on a week’s cruise on the P&O ship Iona to Hamburg, Rotterdam and Zeebrugge (Bruges). Now I know its December and Christmas is not far away and that part of the thing about Hamburg is the Christmas markets, but it just hadn’t dawned on me that this would be a very Christmassy cruise!!!

I think that I have forgotten just how much most people love Christmas and that it’s such a big thing. I don’t go out shopping, so I haven’t noticed all the decorations and Christmas songs being played in the shopping centres. I don’t tend to listen to the radio and if I do its Classic FM (when Tony is out, otherwise we have his style of music on), and I really don’t watch tv!!! So, most of the hype for Christmas does tend to pass me by….

Then we go on a cruise in December, with Christmas trees and decorations, Christmas songs playing, Christmas dinner on the menu one night, Santa hats and lots of Christmas Jumpers, the theatre company doing a Christmas song show and going to Christmas markets……for someone that really doesn’t ‘do’ Christmas it’s a bit of an overload!!!

Let’s start with the quick things to write about – Christmas songs, my favourite of the pop variety is ‘Fairytale of New York’ – that probably says a lot about my feelings on Christmas songs!!! They are just too happy, cheerful and upbeat, after years of working in retail, where Christmas songs got played earlier and earlier in the year, on a loop, I have a rule – Christmas pop songs can only be played from 6 on Christmas Eve and all day Christmas Day!!! I don’t mind instrumental versions!!! But on the ship, Christmas songs were played all the time!!! and the Theatre company did a ‘Deck the Halls’ musical show!!!

Tony booked the 10.30 show, they do a 6.30, 8.30 and 10.30. Now 10.30 is late for me, if you put it to England time its 9.30 and this is when I am starting to wind down at Home and often starting to nod off in my armchair!!! Add in wine with dinner and I will admit I dozed my way through the show!!!

Christmas jumpers – there are soo many different ones, from subtle to loud and jokey, a massive variety and some people must have a big collection of them as they had a different one for each of the seven days. On Christmas Jumpers, have you seen the social media stuff on the jumper wearing t-rex at the Natural History Museum! It does make me smile as he looks so silly! But back to what I was saying, then there were Santa hats, reindeer antlers headbands and other flashing headbands, people had even packed door decorations to stick on their cabin doors!!!

Now to the big thing – the Christmas decorations. To those that know me well and think I am a bit of a Christmas disliker, this is going to be a shock but the Christmas decorations on board were lovely!!! They were refined and subtle and very cleverly done. As you boarded the ship, you came on into the Atrium, this is often the central show piece of the ship and on Iona its certainly is, covering three floors, with sweeping stairs connecting them, the decorations had been matched to the décor – in fact they had done that all over the ship. The style and colours blended in with the colours of the décor.

The Atrium had the most decorations, with garlands on the stairs and round railings on each floor. There was a big Christmas tree by the stairs and then in each bar there was further themed trees and decorations, round the tops of pillars and the bars.

For the shopping area they had gone with soft pinks and lavenders. There was a staircase that was circular with the walls of ginkgo leaves sculptures, the way it was back lit did your eyes in a bit!!! but the tree at the base was decorated with ginkgo leaf decorations. Each bar and restaurant were themed to a colour scheme, so the Horizon buffet was soft blues and greens, colours of the sea.

And in the Sky Dome, which had a pool and hot tubs but in the evening was an entertainment area, against their green foliage wall – all the plants were artificial but they looked really good, they had hung circular wreath decorations, with small gold trees on them. It was all very cleverly done and whoever had designed them had done it brilliantly. It was subtle and beautiful and matched and enhanced all the décor and artworks around the ship.

Ps. I will do another Ramble on the artwork…..

Anyone that has read my Rambles for any length of time will know that I don’t do Christmas!!! I don’t understand, like all the hype, the idea of playing ‘happy families’. I am not religious, so Christmas doesn’t have that meaning for me. I can understand the ‘old ways’ of celebrating mid-winter – the Winter Solstice, Yule, having something bright and cheerful to celebrate in the darkest days, the turning of the season, marking the shortest day and knowing the world is turning and although nature is ‘sleeping’ it will start to grow and uncurl and as the days lengthen - the snowdrops and then the narcissus will start the new season and then we will have the full Spring crescendo. But for all that I am not into Christmas, it seems that it is the time of year that I create a lot of things for – this year I have created and taught a quilt, matching cushion, and a wall hanging!!! And I have lots of bits, from Quilted Postcards, mini cushions, embroidery art, full size cushions, wall hangings and quilts that have been made over the years, boxes and boxes.

And that brings me back to the reason I was typing this, I do decorate around the house, I would say I go into full cosiness mode. The beds are layered with our thicker winter patchwork quilts and then the Yule quilts are added as another layer. The armchairs and sofa have Yule quilts and piles of cushions, to snuggle into.

The mantel shelf which I keep decorated all the time, each month I change the theme to ‘show off’ different things we have created or collected, changes to a Yule theme, with a garland, fairy lights, mini baubles and other bits and pieces, this year it is all holly based designs. I also have a garland with lights and mini baubles up the bannisters. The garland is very old, I think I bought it a few years before Laura was born, so its probably 25 years old!!! It was an expensive, plump grey/green garland that I bought in a Roomes sale when I worked there, each year a few more bits fall off it and it’s getting a bit thin in places but once I have ‘thrown’ all the decorations at it, it doesn’t show. This year I have totally changed the colours on the garland, from the collection of pink, purple and white I have added more homemade bits to over the years, this year it is just three sets of mini baubles in shades of dark blue and grey!!!

And on the garlands, I would so love to have real foliage and branches, pine cones and holly, collected from a huge garden or woodland, a big garden with a cutting area to grow flowers to create garlands like those at Cotehele in Cornwall, well maybe not as big as their one!!! Or wreaths, especially one of those 3 foot plus ones, not to hang on the door but to rest beautifully against an old brick wall!!! Just look on social media at the ones created by places like Southwold Flower Company, or the gardeners at Chatsworth, or National Trust places or Hampton Court or any of the Royal Palaces or read the Country Living Magazine (maybe I should stop reading it!!!)…..as I don’t have a huge garden or woodland to forage in, I will stick with my old artificial ones and wreaths made from Rags & Ribbons!!!!

The Yule wall hangings are up, Laura’s advent is filled, and the bowls of mini cushions have a winter theme. The wreaths, two – both Rag & Ribbon, are hanging in the porch. The candles are ready to be lit, the real ones, my favourite scent is apple and cinnamon, so warm and cosy, also the electronic ones are charged. Our home has gone into full cosy mode!!! And we make our own traditions for the season, changing and adding bits as things change……

My new tradition for this year, having my afternoon treat cup of tea – lovely Rose Garden tea from Whittards in my new Oh Christmas Tree mug from Wrendale Designs, through December and I think I will carry on till Candlemas…..

As I sit here at my desk I can look out of the window across the garages & sheds at the end of our gardens, across the school field to the gardens and houses over the other side in the next road – including my in-laws!! The school field is once again bright green, after the summer of being a sandy dried grass colour, the football goals are set up!! The trees dotted around the edge are almost bare there are a few leaves just hanging on. The overall feel to the day is greyness, a is it going to rain greyness? The world is damp and autumn is here, the light levels are low and it just is miserable.

The workroom, or the back bedroom is where Tony and I spend a lot of our time, we both work in here. This has been our shared space since Laura was born – so 23 years!!! But over the last three years we have both been working in here most of the time before that I had, during the week the room mostly to myself. But over the years I seem to have got more of the space than Tony!!!! I have collected/hoarded more stuff as the years have gone by and actually this is a problem in many ways. There is 30 years of our life stuffed into our home!!! At some point we need to work our way through a lot of cupboards and draws and actually sort and throw away a lot of stuff that has just been put away and with the stuff that we want to keep that needs to be tidied and organised properly. I think that 2023 should be the year that we set aside time and really go through the house from top to bottom!!!

Sitting here there is soo much stuff. I freely admit that my craft/creative stuff has increased, I do more!!! There is all the quilt stuff – almost 35 years of hoarding fabric, in drawers in the cupboard and it has spilled over into boxes. I had already decided a while ago that I would make an effort to use up as much fabric as possible, I will have to buy the white on white essentials as this is a staple for most of the quilts I make but I am trying not to buy anything else, just use it all up and find ways of using the small pieces of which there are a lot!!! This hasn’t always been totally successful as I have been tempted to buy a few 5” Charm Packs but they don’t take up much space!!! Really…..

There are the unfinished quilt tops, waiting to be completed and the orphan squares, there are the finished quilts used for teaching, all need to be sorted. Then there is the dressmaking fabric, a few years ago I happened to come across a shop while away that had a lovely range of dress weight cottons and I bought a number of 2m pieces to make my favourite shirt dress but I never got round to it, I have just continued to wear the ones that I had, we didn’t go anywhere I would need them.

This year I had a big tidy up of my wardrobe and got rid of those things I no longer liked or just wouldn’t wear and I got rid of a lot of my shirt dresses as they had worn very thin, some had holes and they had all faded, then helpfully Facebook told me I had made them eight years ago, in one of those ‘this happened’ posts!!! They certainly didn’t owe me anything. So, on my list for January onwards is make new shirt dresses, I have a new pattern to use! I have a big box of paper dressmaking patterns at the bottom of the pile of boxes!!!

I also have a couple of bags with cross stitch kits to do!!! I don’t have much yarn as I used most of it in crocheting two big Granny Square throws, so that’s one thing I have cleared. I do however have five TOFT crochet kits in another bag! Tucked away in the cupboard are paper crafting bits, then there are the boxes of threads, stranded embroidery cottons, normal sewing ones, machine quilting and embroidery, lots of threads. Ohh, then there are the beads, buttons and ribbons…..

As you can see from the ramble above I have lots of stuff and it all will come in useful and be used at some point I am sure!! But I think I had better stop buying anything else craft related till I have used/created/gifted what I have. Oh by the way I also have lots and lots of candles dotted round the house, I really wont buy anymore and neither Tony or Laura are going to buy me anymore till we have burned all the others first!!!

And no asking for or buying anymore scarves or aprons…….

I have never had a bucket list of places that I must visit, I don’t have the wanderlust to see the great sights of the world – no desire to visit South America or anywhere in America, or see the Great Barrier reef or the Australian outback or do a safari in Africa or see Everest…….

But I will admit there are a few places I would like to see, like Scotland, Ireland, Northumberland and the Norwegian Fjords. Five years ago, for our 25th anniversary we took a cruise to the Norwegian fjords, and it lived up to my expectations – stunning scenery and history. We have not long been back from another cruise to Norway, this one took us, Tony, Laura (this time) and I up to the Artic circle and then back down the coast.

There is something about the Norway and the fjords, an ancient feeling, towering mountains, myths and legends, glaciers, the artic, reindeer and a feel of time stretching back. It’s easy to imagine the Vikings in their long boats leaving from the homesteads along the edge of the fjords heading out to sail to Scotland, Iceland, Greenland and North America. Its easy to understand why the Norwegians have led artic explorations, the land has shaped the people and they have shaped other countries. Maybe its just me, that I am being fanciful, maybe I have read too many myths and legends!!! But…

We visited Andalsnes and went on a trip along the Trollstigen – the Troll road, a road that twists and turns up the valley to the top and the waterfalls at Stigfossen. For Tony this was a journey and places to get ‘that photo’, it was just a shame that we couldn’t just get the coach to stop when we wanted, to jump out and take more photos of the stunning scenery. The mountain tops dusted with snow, it really looked like someone had got out an ice sugar dredger and shaken it on them!!! The waterfalls, and as they had had a really wet summer and autumn, they were full of water, thundering down. The birches in their autumn colours and the moss, green cushions against the rocks. For me its about adsorbing the place, taking the photos, taking inspiration from the shapes and colours, loving nature.

I really wasn’t sure what Laura would feel about the fjords, but Trollstigen spoke to her imagination, she absorbed the tales of the trolls and it fed into her reading of fantasy books and fired her to sit quietly and write scenes/notes/ideas in her Commonplace book, which maybe sometime in the future she will expand and eventually, write into a book!!!!

From Andalsnes, we went up to Tromso and then down to Narvik, not the most interesting or inspiring town, industrial and 1960’s architecture, but from there we took a trip along the edge of the fjord, through the landscape to a fishing area, wooden houses with grass roofs, fishing nets and paraphilia. There is beauty in the ordinary, from rusted chains and anchors to cork float

We also visited Stavanger, we had been there five years ago, this time Tony and Laura went off on a rib boat along the fjord, through waterfalls and hail storms and loved it. I stayed on land, wandered through the old town, with its cobbled streets, lined with old wooden houses with wonderful front doors and possibly took far too many photos of the area and especially the front doors!!!

I would like to, sometime in the future, go and visit more fjords….see more of the beauty of the country.

In the meantime I have loads of photos we took of the troll road, birch trees, rocks and mosses and especially lots of the front doors in the Old Town of Stavanger to inspire me and at some point create into textile art!!!

Or maybe the title should be something like ‘great minds think alike’!!! and I do believe that often themes, ideas and designs come about from the collective unconscious or maybe its just coincidence? Trees and leaves have been one of those themes that have been running through my work for a while – along with gates and doors with the Quilted Postcards and silhouettes and the colour black!!! I love leaves, so many different shapes and now we are getting into autumn they will be changing to so many colours, before fading away back into the earth and then new leaves, in lovely spring green will unfurl next year and it all starts again!!!

Leaves have come to the fore again in my work, in the last few weeks, Tony for our anniversary gave me a lovely pair of leaf earrings, Laura has been embroidering three blackwork leaves for me and when I decided to design and make myself a new bag, I decided to go with a pieced background in different black fabrics and then applique felt leaves and embroider them as I felt that it embodied a lot of me. In my drawings, colourings and paintings, leaves and occasionally flowers have been the starting point of the design, they are then overlayed with circles or lines to create patterns before being coloured, but its leaves again.

And then being 1st October, I decided that the mantel shelf display would be leaves & apples, not full autumn colours yet, it will go Halloween towards the end of the month and then full autumn colours in November before going over to Yule in December.

Running round my mind has also been a few ideas for leaf-based projects and I am even playing with the idea of a yearlong project!!! I was thinking of creating 52 leaves, not big ones just a leaf appliqued onto a 5” square or even 4” x 6” rectangle in different fabric from my stash and then embroidering or quilting them, creating one leaf each week. Then there is the fabric book with trees and leaves as a theme…..and the idea for repurposing an empty cotton reel with a leaf theme….

All these ideas have been running through my mind and then an email drops onto my laptop from StitchDoodles, an autumn challenge for October, stitch leaves on a tree, one leaf each day in a different stitch or pattern. The idea is to stitch it in autumn shades – golds, reds and browns. It isn’t a big design just 6.5” across and so the leaves aren’t very big – probably 15 minutes at the max of stitching a day.

I have for a long time looked at the daily stitch journals but I know that I haven’t really got the time to commit to another bigger project but this tree and 31 leaves isn’t a big project and so I decided that I would do it.

I have gone for a plain off white/natural colour cotton fabric, and I decided that rather than the colours of Autumn I am going to stitch it all in black. I won’t have to think about colour placement and so it will make it simpler. Also, it just works with how I see this tree, a silhouette. And it works with the blackwork leaves that Laura (and I stitched a very small one!!) have created.

So, I have another project to do!!! not that I need any more but its only for 31 days……

I will post it when I have finished!!!!

Change with the end of the second Elizabethan era with the death of the Queen. The Queen was the one thing that didn’t change, she had been there the whole of my life, the one unchanging constant thing in this country – The Monarchy.

Everything else constantly changes, from our Prime Ministers and political landscape - I don’t tend to discuss politics but I am going to say I am totally disillusioned with them all!!! I have no faith in their ability to work for the people, country, or environment. Promises are made and broken as it pleases them.

The Monarchy has moved into a new era and so has the year.

September is the month of change, more than most, I feel. It’s the month of the new school year, Laura is no longer at school or university, but we still live with the rhythm of school life. The school year still dictates so many things in our lives. Our everyday life is subconsciously worked to the school day, from 8.30 we hear the parents and children chatting away on the way to school, there is more car noise up and down the road, as they head to the Infants and Junior school that is behind our house. Three generations of our family have gone to the school – Laura, her dad – Tony and his Mum – Pat, spanning almost 80 years!!! We hear the school bell marking the lessons and breaks, we hear the children in the playground and when nice weather on the school field at the end of our garden. We hear the noise of home time at 3.30. Our life is still worked round the school year, as much as anything because my teaching runs to the same term times.

September is also the month of the season changing, from late summer it changes to autumn. The feel of the day has changed, with the cooler darker mornings, the dew on the grass (with lots of slugs crawling across it!!!), and the softer pearlescent morning light and of course the spiders’ webs everywhere!!! The bright strong sun and warmth of the summer has faded to clouds with occasional sunshine or maybe showers – not that we in Outer London have had much rain. The day is cooling down quicker and it is getting darker earlier and earlier.

A sure sign that the year is winding down is that the tortoises are coming out later, they are getting slower and not exploring as far, nor are they eating very much. They are only staying out for a while before going back to their beds. They are getting ready to hibernate the winter away, I would like to join them in hibernating in my home through the winter.

September is an odd month in the garden, a mixture of summer and autumn. The summer flowers are still flowering – from the cosmos to the pelargoniums, and I even have sweet peas flowering, the roses are still full of flowers, the dominate flowers are the dahlias but the cyclamen are also flowering, and the autumn violas and the chrysanthemums have flowers coming!! It’s a slightly odd mix. And the Spring bulbs are in the shops!!! We have gone out and bought a load from B&Q, lots of narcissus and tulips!!!

I never really liked daffodils, unless it’s the naturalised big drifts on roadsides, or in fields that I can remember from my childhood. But I have discovered narcissus, the dwarf little Tete a Tete ones, I grow them in pots last year and they created a beautiful early splash of colour, a soft yellow in the gloom of late winter. So, I have got a big bag of 50 bulbs of Tete a Tete to go in the front garden flower bed and also three other dwarf varieties – just ten bulbs of each to try in pots for by the front door. Then there are nine packets of tulip bulbs to plant – I know it doesn’t sound many for me, but I have all the pots that I planted up for last year, I have found that I can get a couple of years of flowering from bulbs.

The seasons, year and world are turning and changing but that is life….

Procrastination – the action to delay or postponing of something……

I’m very good at procrastination and so is Laura!!! We often procrastinate!!! The question ‘are you procrastinating?’ is often asked. It can be that we simply don’t feel like doing something, or more often with me, I have no deadline and so am not focused into what I should be doing – give me a deadline and I will work to that, often very last minute. Like finishing Christmas presents on Christmas Eve!!! Or when I was at college getting up at five to finish writing an essay!!! If we were working in pairs, which we often did, it drove my working partner and best friend up the wall!!! She would be very organised and have her section of the work finished with plenty of time – we are still best friends over 34 years later, so she has forgiven me!!!

It is also often that I am not ready to start a piece of work, that I can’t really get the design right and I need more time to think about it. Or it can be as simple as I don’t want to do something, so I will procrastinate, just to put off the inevitable!!! There are lots of quotes, both motivational and funny about procrastination, it often shows procrastination as a negative. Procrastination is the thief of time!!! Is a common one.

But procrastination isn’t always a negative thing, well not for me. I can procrastinate in so many ways – go and do a bit of gardening in the summer, bake a cake, or more often than not go off at a totally different tangent from the project I should be working on and create something totally different.

I should have been designing some landscape postcards the other week for Book Number 4, but I procrastinated, just let my brain play with a design that has been simmering away since we had been on holiday in the Peak District and I sooo wanted to create. So, I made a blue/green sea glass inspired quilted postcard, then one in orange and purples, then another one with fabric, felt and embroidery. Which then rambled into a purple embroidered oak leaf, which then went into a pink and purple fabric leaves with embroidery postcard!!!

I could have gone on but……Tony asked me how I was getting on with procrastinating and when I would have the ‘inspirational’ Quilted postcards for the Arty/Landscape book finished. So, we have agreed a deadline – its written in big bold letters in my planner and also on a post-it note on the top of my laptop to remind me!!!!

But I did slightly get side tracked by a piece of drawing and colouring this week!!!!

Focus……There is a lot to create from now to Christmas!!!

Or wrapped in layers of quilts, blankets and throws!!!!

Or homemade scarves – basically homemade things made with love!

If you follow me on a regular basis and have seen my quilt stories, you may have realised that there is a lot of quilts laying about our home!!!

Quilts have been part of our lives for years, all the time Tony and I have been together I have made patchwork quilts and Laura has just known them all her life – they are normal everyday things.

When we first lived together, quilts were on our bed and also the sofa and armchairs – both of these were second hand and although very good, not completely our taste!!! So basic, everyday quilts got thrown over them – and then we got our dog Sam and the quilts were there to protect the sofa from his dirty paws. He loved snuggling into a quilt on a chair. When Laura was born quilts were used on the floor for her to lay on and then play and Sam knew he wasn’t to go on these – although he would lay with a paw just on the edge!!!

Over the years the armchairs and sofa got more and more quilts and cushions on them!!! But then shortly after Sam died, we got a new leather suite and it didn’t need all the quilts and cushions, from piles of them we went down to one cushion on each of the armchairs and two on the sofa and no quilts!

But over the last 15 years the quilts and cushions have crept back, along with fleece throws and woven, crochet and knitted blankets!!!
See my addiction to layers and being wrapped in a cosy something isn’t just quilts – its throws and blankets!!! (And scarves!! Think I had better note Ramble off down that path today!!) And addiction is probably the right word!!!

It is possibly a seasonal thing, there are more of them around from September to the end of April. I love having a snuggly armchair to curl up in the evenings, to relax and stitch in, in the cooler months. I also really like the look of lots of cushions and throws on the suite. I have a lot of cushions that are ‘good’ show ones that we all take off and throw onto the rebounder when we sit down!!! Just leaving one everyday working cushion to sit and squash!!!

The rebounder (mini trampoline) has layers! It is covered with a wholecloth quilt then has a couple of cushions plus a few of my knitted and crocheted throw/blankets – lots of colours and textures – sometimes I am soo tempted to just burrow into the pile and snuggle in and forget the world!

Laura’s sofa, the sofa is totally Laura’s area, this is where she stitches, crochets and reads, her workspace, that is the haven of soft furnishings. The hexagon Tilda quilt is over the back, with a hexagon crochet blanket, then there are fleece throws on the seats and arms, plus six cushions – three are music note themed cushions – it is a haven of cuddliness.

Tony’s armchair has only a cushion, he isn’t into all the layers!!!

As for all our beds, they have at least two quilts on in the cooler months, one right over and then a second one folded across the bottom and then mounds of cushions. Even in the summer there are quilts and cushions on the beds. And we even have winter/Christmas themed quilts and cushions….

In summer the textiles spread out into the garden, onto the garden chairs!!!

As you can see, I have a thing about textiles, I regularly look at the latest soft furnishings on M&S and John Lewis websites, I am soo often tempted to buy more throws and even cushions, but I am usually very good and don’t, as I have no idea where I will put them.

But, I will create more… not just the quilts but the woven, crochet and knitted throws/blankets. At the moment I have a Big Granny Square blanket on my hook and also I am knitting a garter stitch one in shades of grey, black and cream. Both of these aren’t so much about having more blankets but about having something to do with my hands, they are both projects I can pick up and put down, no rush to create, I can work them without thinking, in poor light, in the garden, they are fairly portable – well till they get towards the end when they get rather big! They are the project I pick up after 9 in the evening, for a half an hour or less, to relax.

The thing is I am getting to the end of the knitted blanket, this leads me to a problem. I have had it in mind to create one in shades of landscapes, moors, trees, streams, rock – purples, browns, greys, blues and greens. I have a fair bit of yarn in these colours. But and this is the problem, I really want to create it, not as the garter stitch blanket that I am doing at the moment. Now I love the garter stitch ones I make, I don’t have to think and somethings, often I just need something I don’t have to concentrate to do – they are easy and relaxing!!! But I don’t want to create the landscape one in garter stitch, I want to create it in different textured stitches, so not only is it the colours of the landscape but also the trying to be the textures of the landscape, but at the moment I want easy non thinking knitting!!!

So, I have bought a box of 50, 20g balls of Sirdar Happy cotton!!! It was in the sale on Wool Warehouse website!!! To knit another garter stitch blanket!!! This is all the colours in the Happy range, it will be a very colourful blanket.

And next year, I will design and create the landscape throw, in different stitches, patterns and colours, as a project.

In the meantime I will carry on creating things to wrap around us and snuggle in with love…..

Final part on refreshing my Creative soul.

Ahh, three Rambles back, when I started my Rambles about our holiday, I said that going to Derbyshire and especially the Dark Peak area really refreshed my creative soul, it sounds rather dramatic, but it really does.

I saw so many things that I want to create or copy in other ways….

Being creative or inspired isn’t just linked to being away from home, I can find inspiration from things closer to home, wrought iron railings in London, the barrows filled with plants in Covent Garden, the overgrown graves in the local churchyard, the grasses growing in the local park, even weeds along the road!

But being away….that is a different level of creativity and inspiration, more immersive, I don’t have to look, it just is, being surrounded by nature or beautiful places, it sinks into my soul. But this isn’t just about creativity of stitching, this is also other areas of creativity.

Creativity comes in so many forms, from stitching of quilts and Quilted Postcards and embroideries, to the planting in the gardens we visit, to the cakes that we had with our afternoon tea and I want to try to cook!!!

We will often have a cup of tea, while we are out, and Tony does like something sweet to go with it. At National Trust places if they have a nice plain scone then he will have a cream tea, otherwise he tends to have a nice piece of cake – his favourite is a Victoria sponge – filled with lots of jam and butter icing!!! I don’t very often have a sweet treat, just occasionally, more often I will have a tiny corner of his scone or a fork full or two of his cake but once in a while I will have something to myself, if Laura is with us, we usually share as often the cake slices are too big for me on my own!!! When we went to Chatsworth I had a lovely piece of cake, cranberry and orange. It wasn’t like the sponges that I make at home – the cake was more like a madeira cake in texture, firm and holding its shape, with cranberries through and a layer of orange favoured butter icing in the middle, very scummy. I have looked for a recipe but haven’t found one the same, so I’m going to put my baking hat on and try to create something similar. It’s been a while since I really had a cake making mission. So, a different side of my creativity will be used!!!

The other side of my creativity that was given a booster was the gardening side, I’m absolutely sure Tony would prefer it if I didn’t get any garden ideas!!! I often get pipe dream ideas for our garden….rebar tree or the woven moongate in front of the garage door but I also get practical ones and both Chatsworth and Lyme used a lot of Hardy Geraniums. I already have two in the front garden, one, a small pale pink, we have had for years, and I have taken cuttings of it and have them in the back garden at the moment. The other purple hardy geranium I got last year with a couple of heucheras, which I also keep taking cuttings off and making more plants. But both Chatsworth and Lyme had them in lots of different colours from white, through pale pink to strong pink, to lilac and purple. And so, I am thinking and looking out for a few more hardy geraniums in other colours – possibly two or maybe three more plants for the front garden!

And finally the biggest creative area – Quilted Postcards. One of the questions I was asked by the Art Quilting Magazine was ‘What do you do when you’re feeling uninspired?

Just go and look at the thousands of photos that we have taken over the years!!! and our holiday in the Dark Peaks certainly added to them!!!

Tony has always loved photography, holidays are about taking the photos, finding that interesting shot, sometimes he gets in odd places to get the shot he wants – one that sticks in both mine and Laura’s mind was him with his back plastered to a traffic light in the middle of the Champs Elysees in Paris with mad French drivers whizzing past – there was no traffic island just the traffic light!!! Tony is a brilliant photographer, he just sees things.

I have always carried, on holidays, a camera but for me it used to be about shoots of things that interested me – there is a file titled Sarah’s Weird stuff!!! But over the last five/six years that has changed its about inspiration and photography for that good photo. Photography has become another side to my creativity. I still carry a small camera and of course I have my phone but I now also carry a big Canon EOS, not all the time but at certain times, places that I know will catch my imagination. The phone is for different photos – they are the ones that I will put on social media or just a quick shoot that I want to remind me – they aren’t the ones for ‘proper’ photos!!! The interesting thing is that both Tony and I will see different things from the same view or place!!! I really try to get photos without people in!!!

When we get home, all the photos from all the cameras and the phones will go on the computer and are sorted – we don’t ever photoshop but all those that are out of focus, light isn’t right or aren’t the shot we wanted – go! Then we sit and go through, deciding what we really want to keep, often there is a number of the same thing – different angle or just slightly different and unless we really like them all, we will chose the best one.

So, from our week away in the Dark Peaks we ended up with 1,388 photos for me to find inspiration from!!!
There are the dry stone walls with foxgloves growing against, with weathered wooden farm gates. Or the old barn with a wonky wooden door. Then there are all the photos of the rock garden at Chatsworth or the Bandstand in the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton. Or the beautifully wind sculptured lone trees dotted around the peaks……

The list goes on…..

I know it sounds odd to say I feel rooted to the Peaks and Derbyshire and in many ways, I would love to spend more time or live in that environment, but I possibly wouldn’t get much done as I would spend all my time just looking, not creating or would it be that living there you stop seeing the beauty?

The Ramble about our holiday has rambled away, a bit like the walks on our holiday!!! I didn’t realise when I started just how much I could write about it!!!

So, part three …. After we left the Dams and reservoirs on Friday afternoon, the road twists to the bottom of Snake Pass, Tony decided he wanted to drive it.

I don’t know how I know about Snake Pass but its one of those millions of weird, often useless bits of information/things I know about!!! It’s a road that winds over the Pennines, it was engineered by Thomas Telford and opened in 1821!!!

Tony knows about it from a Human League song!!!!

So, he decided to drive it, the day before it had been closed but they had reopened it only to cars!!! And as we drove it, we soon realised why. This is a twisty turny road that climbs up onto the moors at the top of the Pennines, as you turned round the bends then there were bits that had been newly resurfaced and white lined but there were two sections with traffic lights and one way traffic because on the first section the road had slipped over the edge and down the slope!!!!

On the second section there was a big crack and it looked like it was about to slip over the edge!!!

I’m very glad that only cars were allowed I really wouldn’t want to meet big vehicles on a lot of the bends!!! Its not a very wide road and because of the twistiness you can’t see too far ahead!!! I’m also glad it was a nice dry bright day!!!!

We drove all the way over to Glossup and then turned round and headed back, stopping in the lay-bys and some that were just little pull-in bits for Tony to grab the camera from my lap, jump out and take photos!!!

On Saturday it was time to leave Hope, we decided to head for Lyme Park first before heading down to stay with family.

Lyme Park is a National Trust House and Estate set on the edge of the Peaks, you drive through towns, past streets with houses and then get to it. On one side is Stockton and Manchester. It feels like an oasis for the urban population, and it was busy when we got there, with early dog walkers and runners. And then a bit later with families with children, getting them to run about.

Over the years we have walked round so many Houses of the National Trust, looked at libraries, read the titles on the shelves, and seen dressed dining tables, peered into bedrooms and bathrooms, starred at pictures of grand ladies and men with enormous wigs – I often try to imagine Tony is one of the enormous curly wigs but I fail completely!!! Just can’t imagine it!!!

Lyme stuck me with the friendliness of the volunteers, all of them were really friendly, saying hello and talking to us, but not in the way that volunteers often do – they often talk down to you, or drone on about something even when it’s very obvious (with needlework) that I know far more than them, but they have been told this information and so they are going to tell me!!! or they often sit there and just look at you as though you shouldn’t be there or are totally bored!!!!

Another place that stuck in my mind was Standen in Sussex, not because the volunteers where friendly, they weren’t unfriendly either but they all looked ‘at home’, they were sitting on chairs and armchairs in the downstairs reception rooms knitting and crocheting, well the women were, they looked like they belonged. I know that when Laura was volunteering at Rainham Hall she would sit and crochet!!!

Also, with Lyme the other thing I noticed was that they had younger volunteers, usually they are older retired people. But Lyme had a number of younger ones, early to mid-20’s. One really friendly one in the library, I was reading the titles and she realised and pointed out a few that had caught her eye – she certainly didn’t look like your usual National Trust volunteer – she had a close-cropped hair, tattoos up both arms and big Doc Martin boots, certainly a case of don’t judge the book by its cover!!!!

The Trust needs the younger people, with different views and ideas. It can be a bit stuffy for all of its want to change and be inclusive especially in the houses, often as Laura calls them it’s the preserve of Middle Englanders!!!

I have lost count of the times that as we enter a house a volunteer has barked at us, no photography! – what they actually should say is that we do allow photography but no flash please. Or no rucksacks…

Lyme has a lovely formal garden, with an Italian area, long herbaceous borders, a rose garden – with a place to sit that the roof has sedums growing on the tiles!!! A quiet and cool ravine with a steam tickling though and an Orangery, where Tony spent a while sitting cross legged on the floor trying to get a photo of water dripping off moss on central water feature!!!

We did go for a walk on the Estate trying to find Darcy’s pond – this is where Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, did his swim and wander around in his damp shirt!!! The signpost pointed down a path but all we could find was a rather muddy over grown puddle – it may have been the pond it was filmed at, it was a long time ago!!! 1995!!!

From Lyme we headed off towards my Step Mum home near Nottingham. But we got stuck behind a white fiesta doing 20 miles an hour in a 40 area and then when they came to any bends and, bare in mind this is Derbyshire, roads don’t tend to be straight they braked!!!! Google was showing an alternative route and Tony shoot off up the small country lane on it.

Now sometimes Google alternative routes can be interesting in the countryside, often they are down narrow country lanes!!! And this route started off like that, it twisted around going up, away from the houses and continued up to Curbar Gap. Wow this was definitely a brilliant alternative route, as we reached the top we pulled over and enjoyed the views, and Tony took loads more photos.

We hadn’t heard of Curbar Edge and Gap before, we only knew where we were by Google Maps and the NT sign!!! This is a place I think we really should go to again, when we got home I discovered it was part of the Longshaw Estate which we have been to, but we had walked the other side of by Padley gorge. We really need to go back there, camera in hand.

Our holiday was coming to an end, we stayed a few days with my Step Mum, and walked the canal – the Erewash Canal. We have known it is there for years, when sitting at the traffic lights, the canal sits next to the road occasionally there is a long boat tied up on it, with the big brick warehouse as a backdrop. I never thought much about it, but we wanted a walk and so Tony looked it up.

We parked on the edge of a village and began our walk there, with fields next to the canal and the railway line, that changed to the backs of modern warehouses and then houses and blocks of apartments before you come to the Victorian warehouses and houses. The scenery changes constantly but the side with the path was bordered by bushes and plants, creating shade. The path wasn’t very busy but there were families out of bikes and dog walkers. There were things to constantly see, and so much history and progression of life along its length. From the canal, to the railway that superseded it, from the Victorian warehouses that are now residential to the modern warehouses to the new builds, a hidden world and history of the area. If we had carried on walking this one canal meets up with River Trent and the nature reserves along its edge.

Many canals have disappeared, with my sister we often walk along a path that once had a canal along the side of it, the only clue now is the pub that is called the Navigation Inn!!! And an information board!!!

Our holiday was over and we headed home…..

The Dark Peaks

We went to Chatsworth, somehow to us, this is the heart of Derbyshire, like Buckingham Palace is the heart of London. Chatsworth is the home of the Cavendish Family, the Dukes of Devonshire for centuries, this is living history started by Bess of Hardwicke, the landscape sculptured by Capability Brown, it inspired Jane Austen in writing about Darcy’s Home in Pride and Prejudice, Paxton had a hand in the gardens, but it isn’t a place that stands still, each generation have placed their mark, the present Duke and Duchess with their modern sculptures dotted around the garden and parkland. I love the dog ones that are by the private gardens.

We didn’t go to the House but to the garden – we had been there last year taking my Step Mum, it had been years since we had been previously, and so much had changed in the years – they had added the Arcadia garden and were working on the wild flower meadow.

This time we walked the whole garden, finding places we hadn’t seen or found before. We started at the kitchen & cutting garden, full of beautiful flowers and a group of ladies, obviously doing a workshop being let loose to cut and fill their trugs with the beautiful flowers and foliage they wanted to.

On to the Arcadia Garden, last time it was filled with Spring planting, this time it was hardy geraniums that caught my attention, lots of them, in different shades of pink, purple and lilac with other plants planted between, then onwards to the wild flower meadow and its array of flowers.

We wandered through the pinetum, recognising the big Redwood trees by their distinctive bark and red colour (and confirming we were right with the tree labels attached to them!!) and onto the ravine filled with colourful candelabra primula. Through the Paxton’s Rock Garden, oh, this is a lovely place, piles of local stone placed on top of each other, but made to look haphazard, plants clinging to them softening the edges, we both went slightly overboard taking photos!!! so, much inspiration!! Onto the Coal Hole and tunnel and into the area round the maze. We wandered all over and then walked part of the estate looking at the modern sculpture dotted all around, I think I prefer natures sculptures – the tree trunks that have been left both in the garden and estate, just large stumps, weathered, twisted, hollow and holed.

On another day we went to Buxton, wandered the Pavilion Gardens and visited the Gallery in the Gardens to look at the work of the High Peaks Artist group, much of the art was inspired by the Peak district – there was a lot to tempt us, but we have no space for more artwork.

nstead, I bought a number of greetings cards and I have decided that I will buy more from individual makers and creators rather than buying from the main high street retailers, you can buy some beautiful and different greetings cards without spending a fortune.

Buxton is interesting but not for us, shops really don’t interest me and once we had been round the Pavilion Gardens, looked at the Pump room and Crescent, a fast walk through the shopping area and the Burlington Arcade – yes there is a Burlington Arcade in London and we have wandered through that too – both were built by the Cavendish Family!!! We then headed back to the hills.

Or rather the reservoirs!!! We headed for Ladybower dam, this is the lowest of the three dams that fill the Derwent valley and the largest. We walked the lower edge and then the following day we headed for the middle Dam the Derwent and walked from there, up to the Howden Dam, these dams and reservoirs were used by the Dam busters, Squadron 617 to practice for the bombing raids on the Ruhr valley dams in 1943.

After Howden dams we then headed up to the Slippery stones – this is where the River Derwent comes into the valley and is the start of the reservoirs. We crossed the Derwent by the pretty stone bridge, when we were there the Derwent was just a stream, as were the other rivers that empty into the reservoirs. The reservoirs themselves were very low, the top one, Howdens, looked like a muddy puddle – not helped by the fact that the waters of the Derwent are brown where they start in the peat bogs on the moors above. From the Slippery stones we carried on winding our way round the edge of the reservoirs back to the car, a rather long walk but it was round a good footpath….

Realised this part is getting rather long….so, I think I had better finish and write the next bit in part three…..

Yes, that sounds dramatic but going away to Derbyshire on holiday, has refreshed my soul, especially my creative one!!!

My step Mum, sister and her family live in Derbyshire but in the south between Nottingham and Derby, we haven’t been up to the top, the Dark Peaks for about 25 years, before Laura was born, except for quick short forays once in a while, mostly to Chatsworth to wander the estate.

My best friend and her husband spent a week last year in Derbyshire, visiting places that we haven’t been to for years, it made me so want to go and ‘do’ them. So, I suggested that we go to the Dark Peaks, spend a week up there and then come down, spending a couple of days with the family and then head home. And that is what we did.

Tony booked us a place on the outskirts of Hope, the lower apartment in what a long time ago had been a water mill – not that you could tell, the only clues were the river running nearby and the gulley that the water wheel was in. Or rather what was left of the water wheel - just a very rusted rim.

What fascinates me about Derbyshire, which has one of the National Parks of England in, is that this was the birthplace of the industrial revolution – the early mills of Arkwright were built in this area. There are mills, mines and an industrialisation often forgotten and hidden away, changed into other uses or nature has taken the area back, this was the home of my Dad’s family for hundreds of years!!!

The Dark Peaks is not a soft area, this is rocky, windblown, dramatic and beautiful area, shaped by man and our use of the land and it continues to be shaped by us. There are still some industries, cement works and mining but its also an area of sheep farming and tourism.

The location of where we stayed was brilliant for us, on the outskirts of the village but near enough to walk into, for the pubs, restaurants and the shops. It has good road links to all the places on our wish to visit list and also we could walk, soo many footpaths right from the front door.

This area is a walking one, lots and lots of proper footpaths, clearly signposted and maintained, Tony paid for the OS subscription to use on his phone, and this is so useful, brilliant for finding the footpaths and where you are going, so much better than trying to figure out on a proper paper map that flaps in the wind and won’t refold properly!!!

This is an area where its proper walking, walking trousers and gear, walking boots, rucksacks & walking poles. I probably look out of place with my ¾ length leggings, cotton tunic shirts, Joules body warmer and pretty scarf – I do have the walking shoes and rucksack!!!!
There are lots of people holidaying with their dogs and also a lot of grumpy teens doing their Duke of Edinburgh Award – they had all the gear, huge packs and stopped every five minutes!!!! We kept overtaking them!!!

This is an area that dogs and muddy boots are accepted and welcomed in the old pubs. The pub, the Cheshire Cheese Inn, we went to a couple of times for meals – a brilliant roast beef Sunday lunch and one evening for a lovely steak and ale pie was old, small and low ceiling’d – Tony had to mind his head, it was built into the hill behind, had a proper fireplace and scrubbed tables. There were locals and tourists, muddy boots and dogs.

The first evening we got to the apartment, after our Tesco delivery, we headed out on a short circular walk, along the footpath behind the place, through the fields full of sheep, watching the sun sink behind the peaks, it was peaceful.

This was a time away from our usual lives, lay-ins and slow starts to the day. On the couple of days it was raining when we woke up, we stayed in, each on one of the two huge sofas, Tony reading, me reading or doing something creative – hand embroidery, knitting or crochet. And then in the afternoon when it brightened up, we would go out and walk and walk!!!

After a day out we would come back and relax with a bottle of beer, there was no rushing about, no phone calls, meetings and constant frustration of Tony’s work. It was about recharging our batteries.

And for me recharging/ refreshing my creative soul. From walking from Hope to Castleton – home of the Blue John and other caverns, past derelict farm buildings, through fields of sheep, past streams and rivers and also the cement works.

Oddly enough the cement works was actually really weirdly interesting, it was hidden mostly by trees and being tucked into a side valley, but the huge chimney could be seen for miles and at times part of the main building, it had almost a skeletal look, I could see it being used for the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic film. It had a weird beauty of industrial amongst nature and oddly enough makes me want to create it.

We climbed Mam Tor, Back Tor and Lose Hill, stood and looked down into the Hope Valley and Edale, saw miles and miles of dry-stone walls (where did all the stone come from for all those walls?) and fields dotted with sheep, houses and farms nestled into trees and watched the land change look with the clouds and sun creating patterns on it and took hundreds of photos!!!

This is a landscape where the structures are of the land, the stone for the walls comes from the land, as does all the stone for the buildings, it blends and fits. I think there is some rule that says new buildings have to be built of the local stone to fit into the character of the place. Which is slightly amusing on the outskirts of the towns and villages where the centre is old and in stone, the stone is weathered and worn with a grey air, but the outskirts is mostly rather horrible 1950 & 1960’s houses, that don’t fit into the landscape at all, then the new houses being built are in the local stone, bright and clean!

This is also a friendly place, people say hello as you walk past, they talk to you in shops – all of which is rather alien for us, people don’t say hello to you here in outer London, unless they know you!!!

Well, I think I had better finish here, otherwise Tony will say I have written too long a Ramble!!!!

Part two will be along soon…..

History bounding, it’s something I have learnt about from Laura. She follows a lot of historical costume/fashion youtubers, many make full replicas of dresses from all different eras and others ‘history bound’. Now I could give you the full explanation of this term but its easier to say – its people who take elements of historic costume, adapt them and wear them as part of their normal everyday life.

Laura is a history bounder – she wears a replica Edwardian walking skirt all the time!!! So far, I have made her four of them in cotton, a green/grey one, navy blue, black and a pale lightweight denim one, they are not floor length as the original skirt would have been or in tweeds, they are just above her ankle. We had talked about me making her a skirt for ages and yes, I have the Patterns of Fashion books with original patterns from the dresses shown in them, but I don’t have the skills to draw these up, full size and then fit them to Laura’s size and shape. I have more books on designing and drawing up your own patterns – all bought years ago (about 32!!!) when I first started dressmaking, but its all very mathematical and technical and completely confuses me!!!

I can take an existing pattern and alter it, lengthen, shorten, change bits but I need that full size paper pattern to start with. So, when Laura asked for an Edwardian walking skirt, I needed a pattern to start.

Luckily a lot of the pattern houses do have replica historic costumes, along with fancy dress and cosplay ones. We went with a Butterick pattern and then I did a little bit of changing around – an essential was pockets, nice deep pockets she can put her phone in and multiple other things! and instead of a button fastening I have changed it to a zip one and altered the waistband accordingly. But otherwise, Laura swishes around in a replica Edwardian walking skirt and I mean swishes – when going downstairs make sure you stay at least two steps behind her, or you will stand on it!!! She likes to say she dusts the stairs as she walks down them.

Now, we go to the theatre regularly – we love musicals and over the Jubilee Bank Holiday we went to see Mary Poppins – Laura loved Mrs Banks’ skirt – basically an Edwardian walking skirt but a proper full length one, with a bustle pad and No Laura, I am not going to make you a bustle pad to wear under your skirt to really make the back and the multiple pleats flair out!!!!

Laura also wants Mary Poppins boots – this I can totally understand, I love Victorian and Edwardian boots. When I was Laura’s age I had a pair of black boots, a modern version styled on Victorian boots, I loved them and wore them till they fell apart. I even had a pair in ivory satin for our wedding (we are talking about 1992!!!), just after Tony asked me to marry him, we were walked past a shop that had these boots in the window and even though I had no clue what sort of dress I was going to have, well make, I had to have the boots!!!!

Going off on a slightly different path, the saying ‘something old, something new…. finishes with and a silver sixpence in her shoe’. My Mum tried to get one for the year I was born but couldn’t – but she did manage to get one for the year Tony was born and so that was sewn into the lining of my boot!!!

The thing about going to a lot of musical theatre for Laura and I, other than the show itself is the costumes – they is so much detail in the costume and we have sat right at the front for Les Misérables, on one occasion (we have seen it a number of times!!!) and both of us just spent the time looking at the costumes and the details and styling – it says so much!

Laura would like the greatcoat that Javert is wearing, this is a military greatcoat not the greatcoat with the cape shoulder that you see in regency dramas or Highwayman wearing, these are Driving greatcoats – I can totally agree, oddly enough when I was her age I wanted one and there was coats like them around, but when I went and tried them on I looked terrible in them, this was the 1980’s – big shoulder pads and I looked, to para-phase someone ‘like an American footballer’ in it!!! hence I didn’t buy one. But Laura would like one and apparently Mamma (me) can make her one in a few years’ time!!!

Next on the list is a waistcoat and then also a pair of proper Stays – yes Stays, not a corset but a pair of Stays – different things and I am not going to explain the difference or the history of Stays and Corsets. This is getting serious, Stays are complicated and will require a lot of adjustments to get them to fit properly, but then most things do, especially for Laura as she is tall and paper patterns are designed for average height but that’s the thing about dressmaking, one of the reasons that I have returned to dressmaking in the last few years, not just for Laura but for myself, I can take a pattern and alter it to fit. I can create clothes that we want, in Laura’s case ones inspired by the past and I am happy to do this.

I would have loved, at Laura’s age to have had the ability to make – hence having the Patterns of Fashion books - and the confidence to wear historically inspired clothing, from the Victorian blouses in the tv series Flame Trees of Thika to the Edwardian skirts of Flambards…….

Warning this has turned into a long Ramble!!! (so long added some pictures half way!)

We had a few days break away in Sussex, just two nights away, but three days going round National Trust places at the end of May. Just a break away from normal life.

We headed out on Thursday morning and headed to Standen House and Garden – this is an Arts and Crafts house, designed by Philip Webb and furnished with Morris & Co items. This is one of those houses that actually felt liveable in!!! The thing I have noticed about Arts & Craft houses is that they have nooks and crannies – corners built beside fireplaces to sit, in the billiard room they had such a place, with two comfortable looking armchairs and a bookcase!!

And they have window seat nooks. Ohh to have a window seat to sit and read or knit or if you’re Laura crochet, on a cold winter’s day!!! and I would need the time to just sit!!!

The other thing that these types of houses or rather gardens have is little buildings – open sided structures, often wreathed in a climbing plant – wisteria or roses, with views. Standen had two and Chartwell, Winston Churchills home, has a lovely one at the end of the terrace looking out over the countryside.

These are places for sitting and just enjoying the moment, but they would also make great places to sit and read or create. Outside but not out in the sun or rain!!! I rarely make the time to sit outside, it’s not something I do, I potter in our garden. But these little buildings make me want to sit, I guess its also the peace of the place.

From Standen we headed to Sheffield Park – this is a designed landscape with trees, walks and lakes – Capability Brown and Repton both shaped it. The rhododendrons were in flower, creating splashes of colour, some were fading and others still in full flower. At Sheffield Park we found another little building to sit and have our tea, the view of the lake was framed by the rhododendrons, and we could listen to the breeze rustling the leaves of the silver birch. Three ducks came in to see if we had anything to eat but as soon as they realised that we only had tea they wandered off to find other visitors with food.

Driving the roads of Sussex there was constant glimpses of purple flowered rhododendrons in the woodlands and gardens – it is very pretty but I understand that its very invasive and something of a problem!

On Friday we started out at Wakehurst Place, owned by the National Trust but leased to Kew gardens, the Millennium Seedbank is in the grounds. There are the formal gardens and then the woodlands. The formal areas are lovely but it’s the woodland I liked most. Hardly anyone seemed to have made their way to the woodland, it was peaceful and quiet, with big old trees – I can really understand Forest Bathing when in a proper old, mixed species wood. There is something calming and peaceful about being there, amid the trees and at this time of the year they still have that soft green of Spring, with the bracken just beginning to unfurl into a sea of green.

If I haven’t been to a wood for a while then its like a recharge of my soul and I go and hug a tree – Tony and Laura just look at me as though I have lost the plot!!!! But I don’t care.

Walking through the pinetum you come across a Japanese cedar has been carved in the traditional Japanese way with a sika deer, the wood has silvered and the tree is slowly growing across the carving, slowly making it disappear.

Another part of the woodland is full of big rocks, solid natural rocks, these aren’t put there to make a pretty landscape these are part of the land, they are weathered and at some point the soil would have covered them from which trees have grown but time and erosion has exposed the rocks and the roots of the trees to create these amazing natures art. They twist and hug the rocks the roots, creating a feeling of alienness.

I have two main thinking times, when I am doing the housework and also when I am sewing things, like today – leaves – that doesn’t really need me to think too much. I am working with one part of my mind and the other is …. well away with the fairies!!!! Falling down rabbit holes and wandering off all over the place!!!!

A lot of the thinking is on fabric creativity – so quilt ideas, Quilted Postcards designs, or designs for teaching, some will be made, others will end up just being shelved away, sometimes they get shelved after I have done a rough sketch in my ideas books.

My mind wanders in lots of different directions!!!! But one thing it keeps coming back to is sketching at the moment. I would love to spend time sketching – working on drawings, finding my style. This is something that I have come back to time and time again, talked to Laura about it.

Now, I do sketch, I sketch ‘rough’ design ideas. Then I draw out all the designs I create, from the postcards to quilts and embroideries. So, yes, I do draw. But I would like to draw/sketch better, for fun!!!

I have fallen down rabbit holes, got lost wandering around looking at different ideas, artists, prompts, styles! The thing that stands out on all the things that I have read is you need to practice……

And practice every day for a minimum of half an hour but an hour is better!!!

Oh dear, time……

Time is something that slips away, I never really seem to have enough.

In December 2018 – I did say I had been thinking about drawing/sketching for a while, I tried to spend half an hour doing a quick drawing – looking at my book I used, I never even managed to do the whole month!!! I tried again in 2019, but not with any better results – I grant you 2019 was a bit of a mare of a year. But I was hopeless at keeping to the half an hour a day and once I had missed a few days, I sort lost the momentum and gave up!!! You can see why I don’t do New Year’s resolutions!!!!

Being me, I had a good look at all the books available on 365 days of art, drawing, sketching, practice sketching and books like that, I even got Laura to look at them. And we looked at online stuff but we both agreed that the prompts really didn’t interest us enough to actually do them, which would mean we would loss interest and give up!!!

We did think of coming up with our own prompts, may be weekly or monthly but…..back to the original problem – time.

So, I have thought about drawing each day and then recently I have fallen down the rabbit hole of looking at stitch journals – ohh I know they have been around for a while, and they have been on the edge of my wanderings around.

Sensible, level headed, mathematical brained Laura just looked at me and went you struggle to find half an hour each day to do the cross stitch carousel horses, where are you going to find another half hour a day to do drawing or stitch journal?

And she has a very big point. I have a list of things that must be done, both housework and garden and then teaching work and Quilted Postcards and of course the cross stitch, all to be done in a certain amount of time.

Then there is the list of things I would like to do, like actually sit down and read some of the books on the To Be read pile – the books on embroidery, art and Elizabethan fashion.

mmm….maybe I could get up a half hour earlier in the morning to have time to do that??? I don’t think that would be a problem in the summer but not sure I would be able to make myself get out of bed in the winter? I’m not so good in winter for motivation. But if I got into the routine now?
And I’m not sure Tony would be happy me getting up even earlier – I already get up over half an hour earlier than him to get in my exercises!!!! But if I had more time…….

Ahh…its almost the middle of May already!! And I haven’t written a Ramble for ages!!! I don’t know where the days have disappeared!

I have gotten to the stage that I have a long list of things that need doing and within a short span of time! I have managed to, over the last couple of years, not let things build up and all need doing at once, but it has happened just because of a number of things all coming together at the same time.

One of the things that contributed to the build up is the fact that Tony needed to use up a lot of holidays or he would lose the days, so he has been having Fridays or Mondays off and with Easter and also the Bank Holidays, he hasn’t worked a full five day week for something like two months!!! We have gone out for days, pottered around, spent time together but it means that each week I have lost a day, at least!

When Tony isn’t at work, days are slower, quieter and more pottering around or going out. When he is at work, and for the last few years, work has been at his desk in the corner of the workroom – although he is starting to go out to customers and partners. When Tony is at work, he starts by 8.30 at the latest and is at his desk, other than a walk at lunchtime till I call him down for dinner sometime around 6.30.

I have my routine of housework, garden and working on all my creative projects, I like the routine, I know where I am, what needs doing. I also like our quieter, pottering around days together, when Tony isn’t working, but when Tony is working, I get soo much more done!!!

The other reason I have a huge pile of stuff to do, is where we are in the term, & in the teaching year. We are in the summer term, working towards finishing the projects before the end of the school year!!!

From September I have been slowly showing how to make the quilt ‘Flowers Make Me Happy’ – from the title you can guess the theme is flowers!!! There hasn’t been a big rush, I worked it to cover the whole thirty weeks of the year. Mixed in with showing the quilt has been smaller projects. But the quilt has got to the final stages – the centre is together, borders need to be shown and then stitched on – well two can be to start with because I then need to teach the corners and at that point I can put the whole thing together and bind it – in all the next few weeks!!! The thing is, I have pieces at different stages – take the borders. I have the pieced background, the flowers appliqued on and then the final borders layered and quilted – the borders are in three stages, to show each stage in class but in the next couple of weeks I will need all four borders finished to put on the quilt – a lot to do in a short time!

That’s just one project! I am also teaching an arty project, so I have a small wall hanging, used as a demonstration piece waiting to be finished. This small wall hanging was the first step in creating a bigger piece of arty silhouette work. I actually need to finish the bigger wall hanging – almost there, but still a few hours work to do. Then I have to write the instructions up and prepare all the demonstration pieces – I’m not going to work another bigger wall hanging but use small pieces that I can make into Quilted Postcards. Quicker to finish!!!

That’s the teaching work and it all needs to be finished for the end of June and the end of term, which is only six weeks away!!!
I am also playing with ideas for teaching when we come back in September, ideas for gifts and Christmas, playing with embroidery, patchwork and quilting.

And I must finish the final, fourth cross stitch carousel horse for our anniversary by mid August, so that I can wash and frame all four for September.

Plus I have two of Laura’s stitcheries to wash and frame…

And I have fallen down a couple of rabbit holes …..mindful daily stitching, stitch journals, daily sketching, monthly embroidery ideas, Worshipful company of Mercers and their history – thank you Laura (the last because of a conversation about her dissertation!!!). Then there was the rabbit hole of a mini mannequin to create quarter size historic clothing!!!! We both would like to do that, now but really feel that we have a lot of other things to do …….Laura writing her dissertation, my teaching work and the fourth Quilted Postcard book, oh and the usual household chores and the garden…….. the tulips have finished flowering and I will need to move those pots to the back, bring the summer ones out of the garage and just move everything around…….

Must stop procrastinating and get on with everything…..

So, rambling on from the last one about the garden, well the back garden actually and since its not gardening weather, well not for me…..too cold and wet! But its good weather for staying indoors and writing a ramble about the garden!!!

I garden in pots mostly, this is my style of gardening and its not big planters filled with different plants to make the displays. I garden in small to middle size pots with one plant or one plant variety in.

I love clay pots and I have these for the hostas and some of the plants I have for my displays but mostly its plastic pots, lightweight and not too expensive or steel buckets, both are easy to move around and also if they get knocked over, they don’t break.

I have to take into consideration being knocked over, if the big tortoise wants to go somewhere she will go!!! She just pushes till whatever is in her way moves. And I also find the odd pot knocked over by either foxes or cats, especially when they spring over the fences. There is nothing I can do about either of these creatures coming in the garden, so I just have to accept and work with it, hence pots and containers that don’t break.

I have always had a lot of pots but in the last few years I have gotten even more!!! I realised that I like pots, I can move plants round, change displays, highlight different plants, maybe I get bored with static!

When I started to look for more inspiration I turned to books and over a few months I got three that are possibly the core of inspiration – Pots for all Seasons by Tom Harris, A Year Full of Flowers by Sarah Raven and The Flower Yard by Arthur Parkinson.

Each one brings their own ideas, from Tom Harris and Arthur Parkinson, gardening in containers, creating displays and seasonal interest in small space to Sarah Raven big garden with all year planting.

On Sarah Raven, when her catalogue drops through the letter box its like this brochure full of wonderful jewels of ideas and possibilities. I spend ages looking through having mad and wonderful flights of fancies – that Tony listens to and just shrugs and says no to!!!
He hasn’t liked my idea of digging up all the grass to fill with plants – we recently got the special edition David Austen rose catalogue through and both Laura’s and my first thought was ‘where can we grow more roses!!!’

Nor has he liked the idea of a rebar tree or a woven moon gate, he did however buy me six apple crates, so I can create even more displays!!! To go with the displays on the garden bench, we don’t really want to sit on it! To the wooden table which I create a display that I can see from the kitchen window.

I am looking for interest through the year, and I am learning all the time. This winter I had hellebores – I really like them but they need to be up higher as the beauty of the flowers is missed, they tend to hang down and really its too cold and wet to lay on the ground looking up at them!!! Cyclamen, winter heather and some heucheras that I had grown on from cuttings I took last summer. Then I had the narcissus tete a tete and a bowl of hyacinths, plus Spring Iris – none of these I had grown before, but they did so well and I have made a note to get more for next year.

As they are all going over I have Grape hyacinths (Muscari) coming out – I have a few pots of the common old garden ones – pulled out of the front garden and just stuck in pots, to see if they would do anything – to white ones I specially bought, although the expensive white ones are lovely, I think I actually prefer the common old garden ones and since I am going to have to thin them out in the front garden – I think I will save a few for pots in the back garden!!

And just beginning to flower are the pots and pots of tulips!!! I so love tulips – I am sure if you may have realised this by now, with the quilts, Quilted Postcards, cushions and wall hangings with tulip theme to the photos in the tulip season that I post!!!
And as they are just starting to flower …….

Ps. I will ramble more on the garden through the seasons.

In the last two years there has been a lot in the media about the wellbeing that gardening brings and the need for green spaces. This is nothing new, look back to the roots of the National Trust, 125 years ago and the ethos of the three founders, especially Octavia Hill, believed in green spaces for the wellbeing of people.

With the lockdowns of 2020, this need for green spaces really hit the headlines, there has been so much in the media about gardens, growing for health, growing food and the whole wellbeing that gardens bring – it has become a big discovery and trend.

It may seem that I have jumped on this trend, but I have gardened for thirty years, ever since we bought this house. The garden has evolved and changed, from a new garden – after we had gutted the house, we completely gutted the garden, after all it was a wheelchair ramp, paved area to falling down garage with attached wooden greenhouse, then about 8-foot wilderness to the school chain link fence!!! The only flower bed was raised and full of wild garlic and huge tangled contoneasters that held the fence up!!!

From new garden to dog area, to child friendly and filled with climbing frame and slide, then to trampoline and then it just slowly just existed, I gardened and tried different plants in the limited time I had. Then we got to 2020, with the lockdowns, I had time to assess, adjust, rebalance my life and needs. Much of the rebalance was with my creative life and the garden comes into that area!!! Gardening is creative…

We didn’t use our Tesco vouchers, usually they are used for meal vouchers to Pizza Express (I could write a whole Ramble on Pizza Express and their service!!!) and also day out vouchers to places like Colchester zoo, but through 2020/21 they never got used, so Tony got me magazine subscriptions, to Knitting, House Beautiful, Gardeners World, Modern Garden, Ideal Home and Country Living – you can see where my interests lie…..Laura has History magazine. The only one I am keeping on subscription for a second year is Country Living – I used to have a look through them, when I went up to my sisters in Derbyshire and always liked it.

So, I have a garden that I want to change and grow, I have more time to spend in the garden and I need to work out what I am going to do. The magazines all say, work out what you use the garden space for – eating, entertaining, growing food. It is at this point that I sort off loose the plot, my brain wanders off from their articles. We don’t eat out in the garden, none of us are keen on the insects that always come around when you eat out!!! Yes, Tony BBQ’s a lot in the summer in the evenings, so that has to be taken into consideration. We may have a quick lunch in our working day out in the garden and the odd cup of coffee or tea – actually its lovely if and when we get a proper hot summers day, to start the day, drink the first coffee sitting on the door step or my little wooden chair, in the cool early morning, before the heat of the day, when its peaceful – before the world really wakes up and the noise of the children in the school field, cars and airplanes start.

We don’t entertain, not in the garden, actually not at all!!! or party.

I tried growing food in the garden, when we first moved in, but they never did well, the garden has too much shade and although I would love raspberry canes and maybe strawberries – which I have tried a few times, they just don’t work. So, no, my garden isn’t for crops. My garden is for gardening, growing plants, pottering in, watching things grow, a place for the tortoises in the summer and somewhere to dry the washing! Its for inspiration and peace.

The next thing that is constantly being written, is small space go with large architectural plants and one colour planting schemes! Most of the large architectural plants would not grow in my garden – I do have a fatsia – that’s a large architectural plant!!! And I have a big, variegated Laurel, that was one of the first plants in the garden but that’s it. I used to have lots of structure with box, but they are all gone due to the box moth. In a few years’ time, when they have grown the laurels and holly that I have bought as very small plants will give more all-year structure to the garden, but that’s for the future. But I guess the style of gardens I love are huge herbaceous borders and cottage garden, I like lots of different plants and I don’t want my garden to be one colour. I want displays and interest throughout the year and colour.

I want to potter around finding different jewels of plants, creating displays to look at, both from indoors and out. It’s to have places to stop, breathe and look at nature’s beauty, from the tiny viola flowers to the roses and the curls of the ferns……

I will just do what I want and like and ignore the whole trends and ideas that are in all the magazines – this is my garden!

So, the only advise I have so far taken any notice of, and it was from Monty Don on Gardeners World is go with plants that are happy, in your garden!!! As these are the plants that do well.

With that in mind on the permanent plant front its laurels, ferns, hostas (and I will continue to battle the snails!!!) campanulas, violas and hydrangeas on the left side of the garden and then on the right of the garden roses, clematis, twisted hazel and the maple!

Sometimes, one small piece of work can morph and snowball into something so much more, more pieces, bigger pieces and can become a whole body of work.

That has happened with my sunset silhouette postcards…..

Let me start at the beginning, I love cloud and sky watching, I have no idea what all the different types of clouds are, I just like to look at all the shapes and effects of the clouds and the colours of the sky, it constantly changes. I don’t lay on the ground, well, only occasionally in the summer, I have done the cross stitch ‘Cloud Watching’ by Anita Jerum – the illustrator of Nut Brown Hare – Guess how much I love you book, from Bothy Threads, and it sits on my bedside cabinet. But I do stand and stop and look, especially when I am in our kitchen, usually cooking.

From our kitchen window, I look out over the garden, at the end is our garage with the school chain link fence behind. We have the school field at the back, it’s a bit of an odd shape as the infants and junior school – which Laura and Tony and his Mum went to!!! - has been built in the middle of three roads, so is an odd triangle shape. From the downstairs we just see our garage and the fence and the odd tree that is growing along the edge of the field, I borrowed the trees into my view!!!

From the workroom (the back bedroom!) with its wide window, we see across the top of the garage, through the fence and across the field to the houses, including Tony’s parents on the other road.

The way our house is angled, the sunrise is on the front more, but we can’t see it for the houses on the other side on the road. But the sunsets we can see from the back, if you look out from the windows at the back, the sun sinks on the left. It drops down making a silhouette of one of the trees in the school field.

I love trees, and they are beautiful in full leaf, but there is just something about bare trees, with no leaves, where you can see all the branches and twigs, especially against a sky and even more against the setting sun. Watching this tree in the school field inspired me to create two Quilted Postcards of sunsets, coloured in using Crayons with an embroidered bare winter tree on them.

That got me thinking about other silhouettes, for the last few years I have been given numerous cards from friends with hares on it, I know that two of my friends really love hares and so I started thinking about designs….

I had been thinking about the design for a few days and one Tuesday morning I had worked out what I wanted to do, a moon gazing silhouette of a hare. I probably could stitch a hare to look like one in daylight with all the colours and textures but working on the postcard size would be small and possibly not do it justice, but a hare in silhouette, I just need the right shape!!!

Then the same Tuesday, in class, Susan, who loves hares, asked me about creating a hare picture/wall hanging……

I went home and created the silhouette of the moon grazing hare, but it was end of term and by the time we returned to class it had all been forgotten.

Fast forward to February and after a class, Susan, asked me again about a hare or whippet picture, but with a coloured background as she had got a Christmas card with a whippet and tree in silhouette, the conversation also turned to felt applique as one of the others in the class was doing this.

The following Tuesday, I bought in my silhouette postcards and opened the conversation to the whole class…… the long and short is during the summer term I will be teaching how to create a wall hanging with a sunset background and silhouettes appliqued/embroidered and then a felt applique border of leaves, some possibly 3D.

But this has led me of on a whole journey of ideas, the hares have been appliqued onto sunset skies with embroidered flowers round them, the outline of the hare has been appliqued onto a white fabric and I have embroidered, one with a scroll pattern and another with flowers. Then I have embroidered sunset postcards with meadow plants – cow parsley and grasses and even created a few with urban/industrial silhouettes.
I have played with colouring the background with crayons, Derwent Inktense blocks and even watercolour pencils – after reading in a book that watercolours can be used to paint on fabric, I don’t have watercolour blocks, but I do have pencils so tried them. Ever one has a different effect. I have also played with other colours to see the effect.

This has all lead me to playing with ideas on paper, painting with both my watercolours and Inktense, colouring with pencils, pens and crayons….

The whole body of work is growing and growing and I haven’t even started to work on the wall hanging for teaching in the class!!!

Hello, I have been trying to write a Ramble for a couple of weeks and I have started two, but a few days later when I have read them I have thought…..delete…

So, I have just decided to write a Ramble, and I am going to ramble and see where it takes me, which paths and ways I feel like talking about. I hope that you enjoy it!!!

I had been going to answer the question that was asked me a few weeks ago, which was ‘how many hours do I spend creating every week’. At the time I had no idea, I don’t really think about the time I spend creating, it is just something I do!!! I don’t just concentrate on one thing, in one day I may start with finishing a quilted postcard, jump to designing a quilt square and starting that, work on the instructions for another quilt square, do social media, then do my minimum of half an hour cross stitch before moving onto, in the evening, doing hand embroidery on another quilted postcard or a box and then doing a bit of crochet or knitting. Some of what I will be working on will be for class, others are for the next book, and some are personal projects.

To answer the question – on the train home, Laura and I had a quick add up and we worked it out that I do about 36 hours a week of creative based work – but it isn’t really work!!! And that brings me onto my second question that I have been asked a couple of times in the last few weeks – ‘what is your occupation? Mmmm, that is always rather an odd one to answer – quilter, embroiderer, Patchwork tutor, author, textile artist, needleworker, stitcher…. I tend to put down housewife!!! Partly as this is the only thing that comes up on the drop-down boxes on pre-programmed job titles and also because it’s really not terribly acceptable – we are all meant to be superwoman and have careers, or at least jobs, being a housewife is meant to be not something you do!!! Putting down housewife – which I am, but I am so much more…. is easier than trying to explain what I do!!!

On ‘doing’, I have made all nine squares for the quilt I have been showing in class – ‘Flowers make me happy’, so yes it has a flower theme!!! I laid them out on our bed – which is where I do all my ‘looking’ at quilts or quilt squares. It’s a big space and has good light, I can stand back and view them as they will be used – mostly on a bed. Well, back to the quilt squares, the fabric I am using is all from one range from Andover by Laundry Basket Quilts, I have had it in a box for ages – years actually. It’s in shades of blues, latte and soft ivory. I had been intending to use lots of the fabrics for the joining strips but when I laid it out, I realised that it would be very, for me, over busy, that it needed just one colour. Now I am trying to not buy any fabric, I have a lot of fabric in drawers and boxes, and I feel that I need to use some of it. I will, however, buy blenders and Essential, white on white type fabrics that I use for backgrounds and linking colours together. But I am trying not to buy much, and so with this in mind, I have been through my stash and luckily, I have got a couple of pieces in latte and soft ivory that will work beautifully with the other fabrics.

Flowers are a constant theme in my work, last week I designed a flower for Laura to stitch in blackwork embroidery, our best selling pattern on Etsy is the Colour Wheel hoop art and I have had it in mind for a while to do a flower version and since Laura has finished stitching the second in her historic costume series, she is charting it up at the moment, I thought I would jump in with this flower before she starts on the third one!!!

Each month I change my mantel shelf display and I have been wondering what to do for March, April will be Spring, and Easter and May will be tulips (and I have a lot of tulip themed things in our home!!!) but March I just couldn’t work out what I wanted to do. Last year it had a vintage sewing theme, but it doesn’t appeal for this year. After I had pulled Laura out in the garden, yet again, to look at my bulbs coming up, the dwarf iris flowering, and the bright splashes of polyanthus, she has decided it needs to be early Spring flowers!!! So, I need to get my designing hat on and come up with some ideas to make – embroidered felt heart, narcissus quilted postcard – the little white ones or tete a tete – got that growing in a couple of my pots, it isn’t flowering yet!

I love watching the late winter and early Spring flowers, really lifts my spirits in the winter months, through which I struggle, especially when the light levels are low. It is lovely to look out onto my table display and see the hellebores – I have four plants in pots, two are on the table and the other two just on the patio, they have so many buds and flowers and keep going for so long. I am hugely happy with my polyanthus, just bought one box from B&Q and did a pot for the back garden and another for next to the front door, they make me smile every time I walk past with their bright colours. And my bargain/sale cyclamen just keep going. I have never grown dwarf iris before, they were part of a bundle of bulbs that Tony bought me – but I have fallen in love with them and plan to buy a lot more of them to fill more little clay pots with colour.

Another plant that has done really well is the violas that I bought about this time last year, they or their seedlings have been flowering ever since. I know they are tiny little flowers, but they are so dainty. I am going to ask for Valentines for a couple of packets of viola seeds!!! The back garden isn’t the easiest for finding plants that are happy in it, as in winter it gets no sun and in summer it only gets semi sun, a lot is still very shady.

Looking forward there are lots of pots of bulbs to come, from tete a tete, to lots and lots of tulips and then alliums. Lots and lots of inspiration. I need to remember, already written a note in my planner, to lift and split the snowdrops and also sort out/remove a lot of the grape hyacinths in the front garden – they have rather taken over!!! Watch this space for both my gardening exploits and all the creative ideas that are going to spring from Spring!!!

Well, I am going to wander off for a coffee break!!! Hope you have enjoyed my ramble….

The thing that has started….. is Laura is seriously getting down to research on her dissertation for her MA, this is due in at the beginning of September. And it needs to be about 15,000 words!!!

Now, let me give you some background to this. For her BA Laura chose to go to Queen Mary University of London as it had a really good Medieval history department, and covered the areas that Laura was very interested in, but unfortunately by the time that Laura got to the start of her third year, most of the Medieval lecturers had gone on sabbaticals and the university had taken the decision to not employ other lecturers to cover this area, although they had employed more for the modern history department. The long and short of it was that the area that Laura wanted to do her dissertation on, she couldn’t and after a lot of compromise on her part and having to change her dissertation subject twice more before it was agreed by the supervising lecturer. Then just as she was doing the final third of her research Lockdown hit and she couldn’t complete the research. The whole thing was a total mess and very stressful.

So, moving forward to her MA, Laura wanted to have a decision early, so in September she began to look at areas that interested her, bouncing things backwards and forwards between us. Was this idea or that possible, could she find the sources and a lecturer at the university that would supervise this area (she is doing her distance learning course at Birmingham University).

Her first thought was comparing the Wardrobe accounts of three Medieval Queens. In historic terms Wardrobe accounts aren’t just about clothing, but all personal spending, from yes - clothes and jewellery, to spices, and bed hangings to gifts. Laura ordered up the vellum rolls for the Queens from the National Archives – off Laura toddled to Kew, where the archives are. Now, these are original vellum rolls from the medieval times – very very old!!! Laura was partly terrified handling them, they are valuable old rolls and partly hugely excited – these are medieval vellum rolls!!! Unfortunately, Laura soon discovered that they were in a combination of old French & medieval English Latin, they were very faded and some were damaged. A rather disheartened Laura came home, if she had 15 years and learnt old French then maybe she could write a dissertation on them.
So, back to the drawing board, as they say. More ideas were batted between us, as you might have realised I am Laura’s sounding board for ideas and information!!! Could she do anything on tapestries, like the Chatsworth ones held by the V&A? A trip up to the British Library – no!!! Not enough information.

Then, while wandering round the V&A (my favourite museum!!!) and finding the basement, beyond the men’s toilets that we hadn’t come across before, not the men’s toilets but the basement…..could she write her dissertation on Opus Anglicanum (medieval English embroidery)?

The V&A had an exhibition on Opus Anglicanum a while ago and we went. On the information they said that average time spent in the exhibition was between 1.5 - 1.75 hours. We were in there almost three hours and only hurried the last bit, as we really needed a tea and comfort stop!!!! It was brilliant and fascinating. And of course, I bought the book!

Laura pulled the book out and had a look through, spent ages looking at the pages and pages of Bibliography, and then went to the British Library to see. Yes, it looked interesting, lots of sources and information and there are lots of strands to follow. The next stage was to see if there was a lecturer at Birmingham, who would be prepared to supervise her dissertation, emails backwards and forwards and finally a Zoom meeting with a lecturer in early December, who would possibly supervise, not quite his area but very interested in it and has many links with his area of expertise – ecclesiastical stuff!!! So, yes, he would supervise her.

Hurray!!!!! Deep breathe, one hurdle over.

So, it was full steam ahead to doing lots of research. But first things first, start to create a reading list, it has started with the Bibliography in the back of the V&A book, just the articles and books in English, not those in Icelandic or any of the other languages, although maybe she will come back to the Italian ones!!! Each piece of information has been written on a post-it note and this has been stuck onto the front of a huge framed Harry Potter poster on her bedroom wall next to her desk, this poster will come down after her dissertation and the Bayeux tapestry panels she has cross stitched will go up. On each note is a key to the type of work they are – article, journal or book, then whether they are available online and from where or whether she needs to go to the British Library and how long they take to get. And as she reads them, they get ticked.

As Laura learns the next bit information – so do I!!! Velvet, gold work, stitches, ells, costs, wages, embroiderers, mercers, Dick Whittington (yes, that one)……

And Laura is thinking of, just for fun, trying to recreate a small piece of Opus Anglicanum, medieval embroidery!!! I will keep you posted!!!

I can visualise quilts and other things I am creating, I know what they are going to look like before I make them – well, not necessarily hundred percent, as things do change but they are more or less designed in my mind’s eye before I start.

I thought everybody could do this, it’s something I have always done, worked through ideas, jobs, point by point, colour by colour. I can daydream, create stories, design, solve problems - all in my mind and I have done all my life.
Then over a few years I realised that not everyone can do this….

Other than designing quilts and stitchery things in my mind, the other thing I do a lot is designing houses!!!! This is usually because I have half watched a house show, like Grand Designs or one of the makeover ones or seen something in a magazine.

We, Laura and I tend to watch home make over shows, or Gardener’s World – I am usually at least three weeks behind!!!! - when Tony isn’t around, so not very often!!! We do like to with home shows, air our views and one of our things is to say what we would like in our dream homes!!!

My dream home, this is the house I would have if I didn’t have to worry about money, could spend what I like, so totally a dream, not going to happen and that’s ok, I like to dream and imagine.

So, firstly I want a big boot room, either off the hall or as part of the hall. A specially designed space with compartments for all the walking shoes and boots – and we do have a lot of them between us! I have four pairs, and I refuse to count how many Tony has, Laura only has one pair!!! It would also have space for wellies. Hanging space for coats and again we have loads and loads of coats and jackets. Baskets for woolie hats and gloves, a shelf for straw hats and flat caps – Tony has a fair collection of these!!! A place to put folded up umbrellas and walking sticks, and somewhere to hang my scarves, and there are just a few of them!!! And finally, a bench seat to sit on to put on and take off our footwear.

Another thing I dream about is a big utility room, organised space to have the hoover, steamer and other cleaning bits, somewhere for all the drills, electric screwdrivers and other bits that have filled up my understairs cupboard – I know you asking ‘why aren’t they in the garage?’ Apparently, it is too cold and damp and doesn’t do them any good, so as Tony has replaced bits, they have found their way into the understairs cupboard!!! Although if this a dream ideal house, I guess I could have a workshop for all that sort of thing!!! A lovely sink to do ‘dirty’ jobs in, space for the washing machine and tumble drier, which at the moment is in the cold garage at the end of the garden, so dislike going down there when it’s raining!!! And somewhere for my heated drying airer – not in the hall, like it is!!! Plus space for the ironing board and iron.

Another must is a big pantry, I love having a pantry, it’s not huge the one we have, and the washing machine is in there, with shelves above that hold all my dry foods, tins and the like. Everything has a place, and I can stand and see all I have got – including five different sugars – yes five – caster, golden caster, granulated, light muscovado and dark muscovado and three flours!!!! Plain, self-raising and strong!!! I dream of having a bigger pantry with more shelves and counter space to hold all my baking stuff. And space for a spare freezer!

I haven’t really designed the kitchen in my mind, I do know it is a kitchen/dinning area, with a drinks station – somewhere where the coffee machines, mugs, chocolate stuff and all the tea stuff are together and organised!!! And also, a proper space for wine, beer and tonics!!

My dream home has a study/man cave, somewhere for Tony to work, space for his computer station and also space for his Lego, that’s space to store the kits, both those in boxes that have been built and broken back down and also those waiting to be built. Display shelves for all the Lego that is everywhere, well almost everywhere in our house – kitchen, Star Wars models including Yoda!! Sitting room – a huge 1m across Millennium Falcon from Star Wars and lots of vehicles, landing - ok they are my little cacti, workroom - a row of storm trooper and other heads!!!

And for me, a workroom, a space with good light, preferably looking out onto the garden and next to the kitchen. I want a wall of cupboards to hold all the boxes of stuff I have – drawers for all the fabric, cross stitch kits, yarn, dressmaking patterns and fabric and all the embroidery stuff. I want lots of bookshelves to hold all my books and teaching notes and files, and bits I want to display. Places for all my threads, buttons and beads and other little notions. An L shaped sewing desk for my sewing machine and another desk for my laptop and art stuff. Also, a table for photography, with the lights permanently in place and big enough to do flat shoots of quilt squares but also having wall space for vertical displays. A big counter to stand at, with storage space under, to cut fabric at, that is in the centre of the room, so I can work all the way round. I want a wing back chair to sit in when hand embroidering or quilting and places to have piles of quilts and throws. A place for everything and everything in its place, organised and easy to find – bliss!!!

Another thing I would love in this dream house is a wall with narrow picture shelves all over it, to display all our artwork, both Laura’s and my stitcheries and also Tony’s photos. I think shelves would be best as I want to be able to move and change round the display.

The other thing I would like is an ensuite shower room, I don’t want a bath, but I guess Tony would probably like a big bath he can properly lay down in!! I want a big walk-in shower, with a rain head but also a normal shower head, with space so that I don’t feel shut in. And a definite must is a heated towel rail!!!

As for the rest of the house, that changes with how I am feeling or dreaming, but I would like a slightly bigger garden, with a potting shed, so I can grow lots more plants!!!! Possibly a cutting garden and an orchard/wildflower meadow…… and a woodland…….

As for Laura she wants a library/embroidery studio…….. And that’s about it.

Best wishes for this New Year!!!

So, firstly, where has 2021 gone? Actually, where have the last few years gone?

I don’t know whether it is my age or just the way life is, but days, weeks and months and years seem to just disappear at high speed. And we are already at the start of 2022.

I am not one for New Year’s resolutions, I never think January is the best month to start diets or new fitness regimes, or anything else!! After all, it feels flat, cold, miserable and just wintery!!! I am in hibernation, curl up mode! If I am going to make any resolutions then after the Spring Solstice (20th March) would be when I do it. As it feels a more positive time, the seasons are turning, and we are heading into Spring, and this is more the start of things.

So, I am not making new resolutions, just carrying on and re-enforcing the ones that I have put in place over the last couple of years, things that are good for my physical and mental wellbeing, give me a balance/mindfulness I need in my life, they do change and revolve, nothing stands still.

I have learnt to appreciate what I have around me, Tony, Laura, other family members, my best friend – we have been friends over thirty years!!!! to my home, garden and surrounding area. To the days out and holidays, where I ‘breathe’ in the countryside or coast.

I have learnt to say no!!! Not just to other people but to myself as well. This has been really hard to learn to do.
The lockdowns of 2020 allowed me to step back, look at my creativity and rebalance – not only my teaching but also all my creativity, that way I can enjoy what I do and create, appreciate it, rather than feel pressured and stifled by parts, I actually think this has made me more creative!!!

I have learnt to say to myself, it’s a brilliant idea but I really haven’t got the time with what I am already creating to do it, so No I am not starting that!!!! It is usually ideas for gifts!!! Take Christmas just gone, I had an idea to create some woven scarves as gifts, but I just knew that trying to fit making them around everything already on my list, would just be too much and then I would get anxious that I wasn’t getting everything done. So, they have gone on my possible gift list for Christmas 2022.

So, no New Year Resolutions for me, just quietly carry on with my life, working through my lists and working on lots and lots of creativity, from patchwork, quilting, lots and lots of Quilted Postcard ideas and Book No.4, stitcheries – including the fourth and final cross stitch carousel horse by Teresa Wentzler, I started the first one over thirty years ago and have promised Tony he would have them, soo many times I have forgotten, but they will all be stitched, washed, stretched and framed for your 30th wedding anniversary in September!!! to finding my style of drawing and painting to gardening.
And writing rambling, falling down rabbit hole Rambles!!!